Left to right, Megan Hayes, 15, of Montgomery Village, Md., Julia Chartove, 15, of Bethesda, Md. and Dana Reback, 16, of Bethesda, perform a robotics experiment during an Engineering Exploring Program meeting at Lockheed Martin, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2008 in Gaithersburg, Md. The aerospace and defense sector is reaching out to young American students as a generation of Cold War scientists and engineers hits retirement age and not enough qualified young Americans seek to take their place. (AP Photo/Stephen J. Boitano)

Photo: Stephen J Boitano

Left to right, Megan Hayes, 15, of Montgomery Village, Md., Julia...

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Greg Maines, 15, of Olney, Md., left, and Chris Schwinof, 17, of Gaithersburg, Md. work on a rocket propulsion experiment during an Engineering Exploring Program meeting at Lockheed Martin in Gaithersburg, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2008. The aerospace and defense sector is reaching out to young American students as a generation of Cold War scientists and engineers hits retirement age and not enough qualified young Americans seek to take their place. (AP Photo/Stephen J. Boitano)

Photo: STEPHEN J BOITANO

Greg Maines, 15, of Olney, Md., left, and Chris Schwinof, 17, of...

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Chris Schwinof, 17, of Gaithersburg, Md., left, works on a rocket propulsion experiment during an Engineering Exploring Program meeting at Lockheed Martin as Jay Soni, 14, of Germantown, Md. looks on, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2008 in Gaithersburg. The aerospace and defense sector is reaching out to young American students as a generation of Cold War scientists and engineers hits retirement age and not enough qualified young Americans seek to take their place. (AP Photo/Stephen J. Boitano)

Photo: Stephen J Boitano

Chris Schwinof, 17, of Gaithersburg, Md., left, works on a rocket...

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Terry Sifrit, 17, of Silver Spring, Md. performs a robotics experiment as Julia Chartove, 15, of Bethesda, Md. looks on during an Engineering Exploring Program meeting at Lockheed Martin, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2008 in Gaithersburg. The aerospace and defense sector is reaching out to young American students as a generation of Cold War scientists and engineers hits retirement age and not enough qualified young Americans seek to take their place. (AP Photo/Stephen J. Boitano)

Photo: Stephen J Boitano

Terry Sifrit, 17, of Silver Spring, Md. performs a robotics...

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Dana Reback,16, of Bethesda, Md., performs a robotics experiment during an Engineering Exploring Program meeting at Lockheed Martin, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2008 in Gaithersburg, Md. The aerospace and defense sector is reaching out to young American students as a generation of Cold War scientists and engineers hits retirement age and not enough qualified young Americans seek to take their place. (AP Photo/Stephen J. Boitano)

The aerospace and defense sector is bracing for a potential brain drain over the next decade as a generation of Cold War scientists and engineers hits retirement age and not enough qualified young Americans seek to take their place.

The problem - almost 60 percent of U.S. aerospace workers in 2007 were 45 or older - could affect national security and even close the door on commercial products that start out as military technology, industry officials said.

While U.S. universities are awarding nearly 200,000 engineering, math and computer science degrees annually - 2 1/2 times as many as they did 40 years ago - defense companies must compete with the likes of Google, Microsoft and Verizon for the best and the brightest.

Industry leaders are doing their best to emphasize the allure, and growing importance, of jobs linked to national defense.

Aerospace Industries Association Chief Executive Marion Blakey said the country could be facing another "wake-up call," similar to the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik, the world's first man-made satellite. China's success in shooting down one of its own satellites last year, as well as the upcoming retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet, signal that the country cannot afford to take its technological and military superiority for granted, said Blakey, the former head of the Federal Aviation Administration.

In addition to fierce competition for a limited pool of math and science experts from all corners of corporate America, contractors working on classified government programs are hamstrung by another factor: restrictions on hiring foreigners or off-shoring work to other countries.

Ian Ziskin, a vice president at Northrop Grumman Corp. in Los Angeles, estimates that roughly half of that company's 122,000 workers will be eligible to retire in the next five to 10 years. The trend is the same at Lockheed Martin Corp., of Bethesda, Md., which could lose up to half of its work force of 140,000 to retirement over the next decade. At Boeing, about 15 percent of the Chicago company's engineers are 55 or older and eligible to retire now.

The launch of Sputnik set off panic that the United States was falling behind in the space race. And it swelled the ranks of aerospace and defense workers as a wave of Americans answered a call to help the United States regain military superiority and began careers building rocket ships and missiles.

Fifty years later, industry executives fear there won't be enough new defense sector workers to replace those employees as they retire.

For its part, Boeing is up against telecom giants such as Verizon Communications Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp. as it grows its satellite business. It even competes with video game makers such as Electronic Arts Inc. for 3-D graphic designers and software programmers.

At the same time, defense executives acknowledge, the sector does not exert the same patriotic pull as it once did because young people today have never known a time when the United States was not a leader in space exploration or the world's sole superpower.

The industry confronts another challenge. Unlike technology companies, defense companies generally have to hire American citizens because they need employees who can obtain security clearance. This eliminates foreign graduates of American universities and foreign employees in the United States on H-1B visas.

Similarly, defense contractors cannot outsource to countries with more technical workers, such as India or China.

Against this backdrop, defense companies are reaching out to American students in the earliest grades.

Lockheed Martin is sending employees into elementary schools to tutor students in math and science and is recruiting high school students to shadow Lockheed workers on the job. The company's engineers coach robotics teams, conduct rocket propulsion experiments for students and participate in mentoring programs.

Defense contractors are also trying to market themselves to job candidates with flexible schedules, tuition reimbursement programs and plenty of opportunities for advancement. Above all, noted Linda Olin-Weiss, director of staffing services at Lockheed Martin, the defense industry offers "challenging work on programs of national importance."

The implications of falling behind extend beyond national security because military technology often has civilian uses, too. The origins of GPS satellites and the Internet are linked to military applications.

But with the U.S. space program planning a return to the moon and a manned mission to Mars, Blakey believes there is at least one event on the horizon that could lure a new generation of Americans into the aerospace and defense industry.

"The question is: How do you encourage young kids to think of themselves as potential scientists and engineers?" Blakey said. "We hope that a return to the moon and Mars will help inspire them."